Jeremy Renner

Viacom Chief Financial Officer Wade Davis is spending considerable time in Los Angeles to improve the performance of struggling Hollywood movie studio Paramount Pictures, after two troubled years at the box office.

Davis is spending “about half of his time” at Paramount in Los Angeles, Viacom’s acting chief executive, Robert Bakish, said Monday at UBS’ annual Global Media and Communications Conference for investors in New York.

Deploying one of the most senior Viacom executives to Los Angeles to lead an effort to shore up the studio’s finances underscores the seriousness of the problems at Paramount, which...

[Helpful note: This article assumes a knowledge of, and reveals details from, the plot of “Arrival.” Read at your own risk.]
Large-scale Hollywood films employ a wide range of consultants, from ER doctors to military experts to veteran...

The weekend saw three new major releases in theaters — Universal’s “Almost Christmas,” Paramount’s “Arrival” and EuropaCorp’s “Shut In” — but holdovers maintained the top spots at the box office.
“Doctor Strange,” the latest comic book...

SERIES
MacGyver MacGyver (Lucas Till) is the target of an international hit man (David Dastmalchian) and must defend himself and Bozer (Justin Hires) using only a corkscrew and a roll of paper towels. 8 p.m. CBS
The Vampire Diaries Damon (Ian...

You can stop watching the skies.
They're here.
Movies that begin with confounding aliens on the loose have been around for awhile (at least since 1951's "Man From Planet X" and "The Day the Earth Stood Still") and they invariably...

Propped over her breakfast at a West Hollywood cafe one morning in late October, Amy Adams was contemplating her dream role. The actress had just dropped her 6-year-old daughter off at school after returning from traveling to promote her two new films,...

After an early-career spate of dramas in his native language, the French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve has spent the past few years subverting seemingly every film genre he can get his hands on.
There was his spin on the child-abduction thriller...

SUNDAY
Alicia, we hardly new ye: After seven sensational seasons, the so-very-good Julianna Margulies drama "The Good Wife" airs its series finale. 9 p.m. CBS
Kenneth Branagh returns as "Wallander" when this imported...

There has been some grumbling amongst industry folk who traveled to CinemaCon this year that studios aren’t really showing anything new. In an age where fans clamor for teasers and trailers to debut earlier and earlier online, Hollywood has started giving...

In front of thousands of cinema owners on Monday night, one of the most powerful filmmakers in Hollywood said the theatrical experience may soon be a thing of the past.
OK, he wasn’t quite that harsh. But J.J. Abrams did urge the crowd at CinemaCon —...

In her articles, books and screenplays, Nora Ephron wrote with wit and candor about the most intimate of topics — her divorce, her parents' alcoholism, her small breasts.
In "Everything Is Copy," a documentary premiering Monday night on HBO,...

SERIES
Reign Mary's (Adelaide Kane) efforts to build political alliances are jeopardized when she takes an interest in Gideon (Ben Geurens). Megan Follows also stars and directs this new episode. 8 p.m. KTLA
MasterChef It's semifinal time, and the...

Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation
Paramount, $29.99; Blu-ray, $39.99
Available now on VOD
Nearly 20 years after the first "Mission: Impossible" movie, Tom Cruise's stylish action-adventure series remains one of the most reliable bets in...

Published in Los Angeles Times on December 20, 2015 — Print headline: "Another mission for Cruise - NEW RELEASES"

The first trailer for "Captain America: Civil War" is out and the fight is on between the First Avenger and Iron Man.
The upcoming Marvel film will see the Avengers turn against one another in a fight over idealism and government...

Throughout the new "Hunger Games" movie, the fourth and final in the dystopian series, heroine Katniss Everdeen's name is intoned with grave sincerity. The manipulative President Snow whispers it, as one does of a worthy rival; her battle...

Jeremy Renner is clarifying his controversial remarks about the gender pay gap in Hollywood with his own words and his own voice. "The Avengers" star took to social media Friday to set the record straight.
"On the issue of gender...

It was hard to watch the Hillary Clinton Benghazi hearings on Thursday without a rush of reactions. Perhaps the most dominant one was entrancement. A Hollywood screenwriter couldn’t come up with some of the moments of partisan drama — and absurdist comedy...